For anyone who wishes to order hoyas from Thailand or any other foreign country for that matter,make sure that you can get a phyto certificate to accommodate your shipment before you pay for it. Customs has been getting their panties in a twist lately and destroying any shipments that are not accompanied by proper documentation. I had a rather large order of rare hoyas coming from Thailand that were shipped on 8/11. The box finally showed up at my house on 8/26. EMPTY!!!! All that was in it was a piece of paper from customs stating that the cuttings had in fact been inspected,were found to be insect and disease free but due to no phyto ( my fault) with the shipment ,my hoyas were destroyed. Bad part about it was that instead of the idiot inspector destroying the box as well, I mean hey if you trash the plants,trash the box too,they found it amusing to go ahead and send me the empty box. A letter would have been fine, my name and address were right on the box!!! The Thai vendor who is someone that i've dealt with for several years now was gracious enough to replace the shipment for me,with a phyto this time. That box was mailed last Monday 9/14,it arrived in N.Y. Saturday 9/19 and it was at my house yesterday 9/21,sent EMS. It took exactly 1 week from the day of shipment for me to receive the order and everything was in excellent condition. david

Update: I ended up purchasing a EuroPro TO289N2 T/O a couple of weeks ago at Target. I really didn't see anything more expensive that I liked better - until one got to the $200+ level with the DeLonghi at Williams-Sonoma (and it has digital controls - which I wished to avoid.) Compared to the B+D CTO6300 which it replaced, it takes about equally long to make toast. About 6 minutes - which is a bit long compared to a dedicated toaster. Interestingly the EuroPro turns the convection fan ON during toasting, whereas the B+D did not. Not sure if this makes a huge difference, but it is interesting. The mechanical timer can either be set to up to 60 minutes (with a 'ding' when it goes off), or to "always on". Speaking of "always on", one feature of the EuroPro is that it acts like a real oven in that if the timer has not gone off, and you open the door, the heating elements stay on. In otherwords, there is no interlock like all of my old B+D T/Os have had. Depending on point of view, some might consider this a 'misfeature'. In my case, I don't care either way. It is just different, so I adapt. One nitpick is that the interior chamber is slightly narrower than the B+D. So the 12" pizza pan that came with the B+D is a very tight fit in the TO289. You can wedge it in and make it work, but another 1/4"-1/2" of width would help a lot. Perhaps a little "local modification" can be made to achieve this... (The TO289 did not come with a matching 12" pan - like the B+D did. Though it did come with a very nice solid mini broiling pan.) Temperature settings range from 150 to 450 degrees. The CTO6300 only went as high as 400 degrees. Besides "toast" and "convection bake", the TO289 supports "keep warm", "convection broil", and "grill" modes. I doubt if I will ever do serious broiling or grilling in the unit. The "keep warm" mode is like bake, but without the convection fan.

Cute but I am not wild about the price or the picture for a Dachshund. Why not make you own with the picture of your own dog. Blow up a picture in a graphics program, get ink jet transfer paper for T-shirts then put it on a already made canvas bag. Then you would have a one of kind handbag with YOUR pet's picture. Good idea??? Clare

I had to look them up. Gorgeous! Jung seed offers 100 seeds for 2.95.